Machines for processing hamburger patties, chicken patties, sausage patties, and similar disk-like objects are known and often include a conveyor belt or similar mechanism for moving the patties into and out of a freezer, moving the patties beyond a metal detector to check for contamination, and otherwise supporting the patties while they are processed. However, in order to package the patties, they generally must be removed from the conveyor and stacked, and the stacks must then be placed into the boxes, cartons, or other containers. Heretofore, various machines have been proposed for performing some or all of the packing functions. For example, stacking machines such as the one shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,052,969, assigned to the assignee of the present application, form hamburger patties into stacks as they exit a conveyor.
One reason that manual labor has heretofore been required is that the number of rows of patties on a conveyor belt is not always the same as the number of rows that will be placed in a container. For example, the number of rows of hamburger patties on a conveyor is generally related to the width of the conveyor. Processing multiple rows simultaneously increases efficiency. However, this number is sometimes greater than the number of rows that will fit into a case or box, so the rows must somehow be consolidated before they are boxed. In the past, this has been done by having laborers take individual stacks as they were formed and manually placing the stacks in a box.
Moreover, even when individual machines exist that either stack or pack objects such as hamburger patties, they are not always easily integratable and do not function as a system. For example, if one element of the system works more slowly than other elements, a bottleneck will develop and reduce system throughput. There is therefore a need for a system that can receive substantially any number of rows of disk-like objects from a conveyor, form the objects into stacks, and place appropriate numbers of these stacks into rows and columns in a box.